"It's gotten to the point where we have to go into departments where we have overstaffing and deal with it," Hill said.

"We're looking at all our departments and we're reorganizing what we have going on," he said.

"We knew it was coming, so when we had open jobs we didn't replace them. We saw this three years ago," Hill said. "We will continue to plan for this because it's here now."

The county's financial staff has been looking at a 10 percent reduction in expenditures - and cutting services proportionally -- to deal with a projected revenue decline next year.

"We've been trying to use our vacancy factors," Hill said. "Unfortunately, with our collection rates going down -- especially with the number of conversions from 6 percent to 4 percent - we're projecting another shortfall in revenue," he said. "We can't keep going the way we've been going, trying to maintain the same level of services within the same budget."

Hill said the layoffs are "part of long-range planning but has nothing to do with smart decline," which the County Council Executive Committee heard about Sept. 27.

"Smart decline will be a County Council decision. They're going to tell us what to invest in and what services to continue," Hill said.

Officials learned a month ago that the county's tax base is in decline. And in a county accustomed to increasing property values, a mill may well be worth less in 2012 than it was in 2007, according to Assessor Ed Hughes.

The financial staff already had been working on the smart decline plan that takes advantage of normal employee attrition to reduce the county payroll. But that may not be enough to offset the expected drop in revenue, so smart decline could result in layoffs and the reduction or elimination of more services to county residents, officials said Sept. 27.

"That's one of our strategic initiatives for fiscal year 2012, so we've got to do it sometime in 2011," Hill said Tuesday.

"Give us something to work with so we know we're heading in the right direction," Hill said at the time. "I don't want to come back to you and be told, 'Hey you're going down the wrong road.' That would be a waste of staff resources."

Hill got some feedback from the committee, but not much direction.

"Our resources may need to be redeployed," said County Council Chairman Weston Newton. "The challenge to us is to prioritize our services from here on out."

The smart decline plan "is probably a worthy exercise," Newton said.

"It's probably more in depth and more detailed than our normal budgeting process," he said.

Councilman Jerry Stewart said the council eventually may be forced to raise taxes.

"There's a point in time that if you cut too much it makes it hard to recover. If we go over a cliff there's no coming back," Stewart said Sept. 27.

"We have this unwritten rule that there will be no increase in taxes. But there will come a time that we can't continue to deprive ourselves; we have to put something back into the system. At some point we're going to have to invest and in order to invest we're going to have to increase revenue by raising taxes."

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Millions of workers are getting let go because companies don't know what the marxist in the white house is going to do next. All his signals are anti-business and anti-incentives for new jobs. Businesses are holding trillions in cash because they don't trust OB and his spread-the-wealth friends to support job growth.

And now the county wants to follow that policy? Ya, lets do that, lets raise taxes so more businesses will close their doors and new business opportunities will go to other counties so we can lay off more people. Ya lets do that!

Build incentives for new business & jobs and funds will come rolling in, it always works. Increase taxes and jobs & new business die.

The libs just can't seem to get their minds around that fact.

Sun City tried to incorporate as a means to bring in business fees and hold down their rising community cost. However, Pulte was against it and most of the residents didn't believe it would work. Now their fees are rising with no offset and all you hear is complaining.

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